Talkback,advertising and journalism

Abstract

Commercial radio in Australia was effectively deregulated in the late 1980s, when the statutory regulatory requirements were replaced by industry self-regulation. One of the effects of this deregulation has been a narrowing of the range of programming formats across the industry which has, in turn, dramatically increased the commercial power of the successful radio talkback hosts on the AM band. The eruption of a scandal involving a number of these talkback hosts in 1999 exposed problems in the way that self-regulation had operated. This article outlines what has become a case study of the failure of self-regulation to protect the public interest.